


proud and high or low and humble

by brella



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, gently navigating the territory between friends and Something More, plus fire emblem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 01:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14884998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: It's Kenma, after all—whatever that has come to mean, he is still learning.





	proud and high or low and humble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strikinglight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/gifts).



> For Meg, for the acts of intimacy meme: accidentally falling asleep together. I hope that this, my inaugural attempt at these difficult, Meaningfully Silent boys, meets with your approval :3c I have no clue what I'm doingggg, //hides face
> 
> ([the mood music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e95ImKMCR6w) that so eluded me.)

"What are you playing?" Tetsurou asks.

Kenma glances up only briefly, nothing more than a polite signal that he'd heard him. His thumbs keep working meticulously at the buttons of his 3DS, the one dim source of light in the darkening bus as it rolls along the highway back to Tokyo. He's curled into his seat in a typically elaborate and uncomfortable-looking way, feet on the back of the chair in front of him so that his knees are eye-level, elbows tucked flush against his sides. Tetsurou had taken the spot beside him, as always, tossing his jacket and bag onto the rest of the empty row.

They'd spent the day practicing against Shinzen, and had won nearly all of their matches. Aside from a few sloppy plays on Lev's part and a boisterous outburst on Yamamoto's that would absolutely have gotten them a penalty in an official match, Tetsurou had not really needed to yell at anyone, which had been a pleasant change of pace.

Kenma had played well, and Tetsurou had been proud, in that silly, protective way with which a lifetime of watching Kenma's quiet successes has made him familiar; but there had been something else, too, stirring beneath it, a comfortable mingling of affection and esteem. He hadn't read too much into it. It's Kenma, after all—whatever that has come to mean, he is still learning. 

"Fire Emblem," Kenma replies, sounding as though nothing has ever bored him more, but the distinct glimmer in his eyes, impassioned-shoujo-heroine-like, betrays him.

"Oho? Fire Emblem?" Tetsurou puts all of his energy into sounding as intrigued as possible, drawing out the syllables until they have reached their full potential, craning his neck to better survey the screen. The 3D is not on. Kenma has always said it gives him headaches.

 _(Why the hell did I shell out for it, then_ , Tetsurou had barked on Kenma's thirteenth birthday, _if you're not even going to use it the way you're supposed to?_ And Kenma had astounded him by smiling elusively at the grass between them and replying, as though there was nothing in this world that he was more grateful for, _Because you're nice, Kuro._ And Tetsurou had said, to stuff down the flustered feeling taking form in his chest, _I'm nice to **you**_ , which hadn't really been true, in the strictest sense, but it had felt, in that moment, like it was the only relevant part of him, the one that would do anything for Kenma.)

"Hm, hm," Tetsurou muses now, nodding raptly as he watches Kenma command the tiny figures on the map, guiding them from square to square, to victory, to each other."Which one do you like, Kenma? It's that cute girl on the pegasus, isn't it?"

He points to her, directly and inconsiderately in Kenma's way, just as the map zooms in to a battle scene in which that same cute girl mows down some kind of armored zombie with a twirl of her lance. After she does, another enemy with an axe rushes at her, but the princely-looking guy beside her leaps in the way and protects her, crying out some gallant saying or another.

Video games think of everything these days. Tetsurou misses Pac-Man. 

Kenma hums his dissent, leaning away absentmindedly to keep his view from being obstructed. "No. She's nice. But she likes Chrom." He huffs when her attack misses. "And the RNG didn't give her very good stats on this run... her speed is really bad. She's hard to use when I'm min-maxing."

"Hm," Tetsurou says again. "Those are all certainly words."

"Why did you ask if you're just going to make fun of it?" Kenma mutters.

His eyebrows have pinched together, and a crease forms faintly between them, so Tetsurou knows he's touched a nerve, which gives him the same sense of importance that it always has. Kenma is comprised intricately of so many nerves, so many evasive inclinations, that honing in on one of them (if it's small, anyway, but then, he knows Kenma too well and likes him too much to aim for the big ones) is as satisfying as it is rare.

"I wasn't making fun of it," Tetsurou insists, throwing his hands up innocently. "Do your best. I'm sure you'll save the world." _If anyone can do it_ , he thinks before he can take another breath, _it's you_. "With your min-maxing."

Kenma rolls his eyes wearily, but his focus doesn't stray. That is something that not even Tetsurou has ever really been able to achieve. The crease lessens, but the solemn cast of his face remains.

"Everything I do matters," he says quietly. "It's my job to keep them alive."

Tetsurou blinks. The reading light overhead is going out, flickering periodically, its feeble artificial warmth giving the roots of Kenma's hair a russet tint and the shadows in the folds of his jersey a fathomless depth, enough to render him otherworldly. The volume on the 3DS is turned all the way down, but Tetsurou thinks he can hear music from that little war for a moment, sweeping and dauntless, as though its armies will live forever in legend. These have always been the worlds that Kenma chooses to live in—ones where winning means something, and losing means everything.

"That's an awful lot of responsibility," Tetsurou says gently. "Doesn't it stress you out?"

Kenma gives a tiny, modest shrug. "Not really." 

Tetsurou smiles wonderingly down at him, at each inch of his face, at the fold of his pale lip as it vanishes behind his teeth in concentration.

"Quit looking at me weird," Kenma says.

"I'm not," Tetsurou lies, smiling wider.

"You are."

"Am not."

"Are."

"Am not!" Tetsurou insists. "You're a natural leader, Kenma!"

Kenma grimaces, like Tetsurou has just forced him to eat something very unappetizing. "Kuro, _stop_." 

"Well," Tetsurou sighs out, stretching his arms over his head until his shoulders crack, "a natural strategist, maybe."

"Hm."

Tetsurou leans back in the seat, letting his legs go slack, and the post-practice tension begins at last to unravel from each muscle, gradual and steady. His palms are still prickling and red and his fingers still sore, the sting exhilarating even now, even as everyone on the bus sleeps away the day's victories and the summer stars emerge beyond highway.

"Kenma," he says, and turns his head.

Kenma sets a mage upon an enemy riding a dragon. Wind erupts from the pages of the tome they're carrying, bright turquoise, and knocks the beast from the sky—and Kenma's mouth quirks up, pleased, and though it's hardly there, it brightens his eyes until they are nearly molten with pride. Tetsurou casts around for a word to describe the expression and, without much delay, comes up with  _cute_.

Kenma makes a noise of acknowledgement. Tetsurou doesn't know what he will say next. Sometimes Kenma's name slips from him naturally, without purpose, nothing more than an ode to the privilege of saying it—as though it's some affectionate nickname that only the two of them know, but maybe that's just a natural consequence of it meaning something different in his mouth, something alive, said but somehow unspoken.

Then it comes to him. "Tell me the story."

Kenma pauses the game. The figures locked in combat hang suspended, swords raised. When Kenma's eyes search for and then find Tetsurou's, they're a little wider than usual, which is about the closest his face ever comes to displaying bewilderment.

"The story?" he repeats.

Tetsurou nods. "The story of Fire Emblem."

Kenma's small brows furrow. " _All_ of Fire Emblem?" It sounds as if this would be a daunting feat.

"Just this Fire Emblem," Tetsurou relents, because he is kind.

Kenma stares at him for a long moment. The bus passes a car in the next lane, and its yellow headlights slip past, illuminating Kenma's face. 

"I like it when you talk about the things you like," Tetsurou says frankly. 

Kenma squints at him. "You're just going to fall asleep, aren't you."

"Kenma!" Tetsurou lays a hand across his chest, recoiling in false hurt. "Would I ever be so rude?"

Kenma squints harder. "Yeah," he says, and it feels like it hits Tetsurou right between the eyes.

Before he can defend himself, however, Kenma sighs softly through his nose and, after a pause, scoots over. There's a strange diffidence in the movement, but he still settles his head at the crook of Tetsurou's armpit, his left arm and elbow squished against Tetsurou's ribs. He's warm.

Tetsurou gazes at the crown of his head, where the hair he'd helped him bleach all those months ago has faded to wheat-gold, summer-gold,  _gold_ , its ends mussed against Tetsurou's black t-shirt. The roots have grown into it almost seamlessly. A part of Tetsurou—no; the whole of Tetsurou—almost begins to bow his neck until his mouth finds the part, until the pale line becomes a word that he can learn. Instead, he carefully slips his arm behind Kenma's back, and Kenma sits up a little bit so that he can lift it, and drape it across Kenma's shoulders, and keep it there.

Kenma nestles in further. Tetsurou can't see his toes, but he can tell that they're curling in his sneakers. Muffled, Tetsurou yawns, shifting around until he's comfortable.

"In this Fire Emblem," Kenma begins, softly into the gathering dark, the way all good stories are told, "you wake up in a field, and you take a stranger's hand."

Tetsurou's chin eases itself onto Kenma's head, even as the circulation starts to seep from his arm. Kenma sinks restfully into him and goes on talking, each word drifting out in earnest, careful measure, and Tetsurou closes his eyes, humming along every now and then to pretend that he is paying attention to the story rather than the way it sounds when Kenma tells it.

He falls asleep easily, without thinking, without even really wanting for it, just as Kenma had said he would.  _Kenma knows all_ , Tetsurou will say tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, with a grin that's altogether closer to a brag, and Kenma will tell him to stop, and he will not.

("This happens all the time," Nekomata says to Naoi with a chuckle, after the bus has pulled up in the Nekoma parking lot at nearly eleven. "Let’s give them a minute more to sleep. Days like this feel so much longer when you're that young.")

**Author's Note:**

> Meg I hope you don't mind that in the end the actual falling asleep together ended up being more Implied but I, too, started to get contentedly sleepy imagining Kenma explaining the entire plot of Fire Emblem: Awakening, and I had to fight my way out before I started napping on my keyboard. 
> 
> Title is from "Before I Go" by Bearfoot. :)


End file.
